Friday, May 27, 2011

Mimic Compiz Zoom in Windows 7

The most thing that i miss once i log into windows is the compiz zoom using the winkey and the mouse wheel feature on linux , i tried to search for alternative but with no luck each time till i read an article recently on lifehacker which shows that the new built in magnifier in windows 7 has a mode to magnify the whole screen rather than certain part (aka docked mode) , that was great news except the shortcut keys are Winkey +/- and can't be changed !!.

After some searching i found a program called autohotkey that could serve me in solving this issue , any way if you aren't into technical details you can grab the compiled version and start using it immediately.

3 comments:

brilliant - thanks for posting this tip. Even with this Win 7 zoom is still nowhere near as smooth and usable as compiz zoom which can be quite organic and fluid to use. Until I get around to dual booting ubuntu on this laptop this will keep me happy.

One thing I've noticed though. If you disabled Windows 7's hotkeys via registry (nowinkeys) and use the magnifier via windows key and plus/minus, when one zooms in (+) it will add +'s into notepad/IM clients/any app that has text input.

If I don't set the nowinkeys option in the registry, then it's fine.

The reason I disable the stock Windows hotkeys is so I can claim win+1,2,3,4,5 etc; (quiclaunch) so I can bind them to my virtual desktop manager.